Michigan's Tim Hardaway Jr. cruises in for an uncontested dunk during the second half of a 66-35 win over South Carolina Upstate at Crisler Arena on Saturday night.

Lon Horwedel | AnnArbor.com

Who will score?

The freshman guard spread his game-high 19 points between the 3-point arc, aggressive drives to the basket and trips to the free-throw line during the Wolverines’ season-opening, 66-35 win over South Carolina Upstate on Saturday night.

“Right off the bat, he came in here and did what we thought he would do. He’s a really great player and a special kid,” junior forward Zack Novak said. “It’s fun to watch him, fun to play with him.”

Sophomore point guard Darius Morris added 17 points in the win, but both players insisted it’s too early to coronate the 1-2 combination that’ll replace the departed scoring punch of last year’s leading scorers, Manny Harris and Deshawn Sims.

“It’s just the flow of the game. Any given night, anybody can get on fire,” Hardaway Jr. said. “We have to find that open man that’s getting it going. We just focus on running the offense and playing great defense, because that’s where we want most of our points to come off of fast breaks.”

Morris agreed, saying “we know that this is going to be a team effort and we’ll need everybody to step up some nights on offense.

“Just tonight, that’s how it went,” he said. “The opportunities were there for us to score, but in the future I know there will be nights when anybody is the high scorer and my job is just to execute Coach’s offense.”

Coach John Beilein was just as focused on Wolverines’ defensive execution against an Upstate team that his coaching staff had a limited scouting report on.

Playing almost exclusively man-to-man, Michigan limited the Spartans to 22 percent (12-of-54) shooting. Upstate cooperated significantly in the early going, scoring its first three baskets of the game with five-minute intervals. A post basket by Mezie Uzochukwu made it 27-7 with 8:41 left in the first half.

Tony Dukes and Marquis Sloan led Upstate, picked to finish 11th in the 11-team Atlantic Sun Conference, with five points apiece.

Michigan’s defensive success should have led to more points for the Wolverines, Beilein said.

“This score, ideally, would be 75 or 80 points in a game like this, but we didn’t take advantage of some great opportunities to fast break,” he said.

There were some transition points.

After helping the Wolverines build that 20-point first-half lead by hitting three of his first five 3-point attempts, Hardaway’s high-flying fast break dunk four minutes into the second half halted an Upstate mini-run and drew the biggest game-related cheer of the night from a quarter-full Crisler Arena.

(Unofficially, the biggest cheer came when Michigan quarterback Denard Robinson made his way into the arena late in second half, although back-to-back showtime dunks by Novak and Morris minutes later brought the crowd to its feet.)

Stu Douglas came off the bench to score eight points for Michigan and Novak finished with seven points and a game-high eight rebounds.

Coming off a dismal 3-of-21 performance from 3-point range in an exhibition win over Saginaw Valley State, Michigan hit six of 13 long-range attempts in the first half before hitting just one of nine in the second half.

Beilein says he was pleased with the team’s shot selection in the second half and that he expects those balls to start falling as the season progresses. But it was still nice to have Hardaway Jr. connecting early in the game.

“He really shot the ball well to get us going,” Beilein said. “Getting a freshman comfortable is very hard. Usually, No. 1, he’s sitting on the bench waiting to get time. But we have three of them out there not sitting on the bench but in the starting lineup, and that’s a whole different comfort level.

“People will defend him differently, but every game he’ll get a little bit better. I just like that he doesn’t back down.”